I had a Call with Bapak2 Trader

I woke up at 5:30AM in the morning today. Not because I am a super disciplined person but because frankly I have been travelling and there is a 6 hour difference, yet I have to take Jakarta time afternoon client calls. So 1pm in Jakarta was 7AM here. With me still wanting to go back to bed and be in one with that soft pillow, I begrudgingly decided to drag myself and make a cup of coffee. I just had to caffeinate my body before the call. After that’s done, I sat down, opened my laptop getting ready for the call and hoped for the best. What a huge mistake, hope that is.

If I were to be honest, the reason to have calls with potential customers is “to convince” them to sign up. Simple. Of course we want customers so that our business can stay alive. So I would listen to them and see their predicaments, their area of their problem and see if we could be of help or not. But sometimes the conversation could be… well amusing. Or maybe a musing.

One that makes me go into a state of a lot of musing. Amusing.

I said hello, my name is Toby while waving my hand cheerfully and nodded. I introduced myself as the Co-Founder of Recompound and I am very thankful for the person’s time. I also always add that the call is intended to get to know each other to see if they need our help in their investments or not. The moment I mentioned investments, he stared into my face, without any expression. Dead cold and said: “hello”.

In my mind, I was like oookay. Let’s move on! So I mentioned, how can I help you today? Maybe you could share a little bit more about your investing experience.

So of course he mentioned that he has been trading on and off for more than 10 years. He is really proud of his trading methodology, mentioning that trading is incredibly superior to investing. The reason is really simple yet powerful. Trading has all of the data from volume, moving averages and all of the indicators that could be used by the trader to gain an edge and therefore profits in the market. Investing relies on shoddy and incomplete data in such a way that making decisions from those data is not helpful. He went on further saying and emphasising quite a few times that…

Trading is not equals to gambling.

Which I genuinely agree as long as you have a proper trading plan. By the sound of his confidence, he sure as hell has a proper trading plan. But I still got puzzled. I never mentioned that trading is gambling to this person, yet he got really worked up when explaining about his trading experiences. So I mentioned simply, it seems you have been able to be profitable in your trading endeavours which explains your confidence.

But then he said he would have made money if:

• he could control his emotions when trading.

• he could react fast enough to market moves.

Ok so despite his proud assertions about how trading is the gold standard, he claims that it is actually costing him money. To his disappointment, I quickly mentioned that we don’t help people trade investment instruments. We help them invest better for the long term. Which he absolutely detests. But somehow he decided to “learn more” about investment because he says:

“I have traded options for multiple years in the past, but I don’t understand stocks.”

Which again, is frankly quite odd. To me it sounds like: I have been doing a lot of multiplication, but I don’t understand how addition works.

But that’s fine, I mean we encounter strange things on our day to day lives. So I patiently explained how stocks work. We treat them as a business and understanding its quality to be able to obtain a slice of ownership at bargain prices.

So he immediately cut in: “What’s the difference between you and WhatsApp groups? They give free analysis. Why should I pay you?”

I asked: “Free analysis?”

He said: “Yeah, with all the deep analysis, charts and stuff. They frequently posted it for us to see for free. There are loads of them!”

I know that we Indonesians are known to be generous (one of the top countries with most donations in nominal terms if I recall correctly), but I am pretty sure that those WhatsApp groups are not doing charity. So I just highlighted several key differences:

• legality

• professionality

• personalisation

• etc

But up until now, no matter what I said, it felt like it was “wrong” in his eyes. Every answer got a pushback. It was like he cared more about proving he was right — or smarter than me — than actually listening. Which is fine; plenty of people are smarter than me.

Then I mentioned, almost in passing, that we actually select our clients and turn away many who don’t align with us. Then suddenly… he changed. His tone softened. His face relaxed. He leaned in a little, like he wanted to show he was the kind of client we’d want.

So to recap:

• This Bapak glorifies his short term trading strategies

• Then reveals that his glorified trading strategy is costing him money, but still glorifies it

• Then wants to “learn” what is stocks and how are we different from other groups that give recommendations

• Then is not convinced by the fact that he has to pay for our service because others give for free

• Then becomes genuinely enticed to learn more about us after learning that we are selective of our clients.

I got confused until I decide to pen down my thoughts here. Still am confused. But I suppose that is when I realise that I can’t please everyone and I don’t have to.